- [Instructor] Hey everyone, it's Neil Patel.
And today I'm going to be going
over Instagram Marketing Hacks.
And this is part of the "Instagram Unlock" course
where I teach you how to go
from zero to 100,000 followers on Instagram.
If you haven't seen any of the previous lessons,
this is a two week course.
You can go to neilpatel.com/training
and click on "Instagram Unlocked."
You can find all the lessons there
as well as the cheat sheets, worksheets, PDFs,
that will help you throughout your journey
and get you to 100,000 followers.
So let's dive right in.
Hack number one, understanding user engagement.
Engagement and community.
Look, the algorithm bumps posts
from accounts that users interact with.
This means for creators
that are focusing on engagement and community,
it's the key factors to succeeding
and examples of this is if you're going to
get a lot of comments,
if you're going to get a lot of swipes,
when you're using carousel images
and you're having multiple images in one post,
that's all examples of engagement,
or even if you have a video
and someone watches the whole video,
whether it's on IG TV or your profile,
or someone just watches two seconds.
What do you think they're going to like more?
The person who watches the two second video
or the person that watches all five minutes.
Of course, they're going to like the person
that watches all five minutes,
because it keeps them on Instagram longer,
which helps them generate more ad revenue.
Now, with their algorithm
there's a few things that you can do
to also help boost your engagement.
You can tag people in posts.
You can leave comments.
So every time someone leaves a comment
on my profile, I try to leave a comment responding to them,
or I'll go to other profiles within my space,
whether they're competitors
or just industry influencers,
trying to engage and comment on their profiles
because it helps increase my engagement.
I changed direct messages with people in my community,
as well as other people in the industry.
And as I mentioned, comment replies,
this works really well,
but people are really lazy to do it,
but again, it works well.
A lot of people do this.
I do it.
Gary Vaynerchuk does it.
I started doing this with my blog over 13 ish years ago.
And that's worked well, not just on my blog,
but every social network out there.
because they love comments more than they like the likes.
Now, apart from Instagram algorithm,
you'll get three to five X higher engagement
from your post in the long run.
If you respond to comments because
it shows people you care.
And that's why I reply to every follower comment that I can.
And just simply respond with a thank you
or answer their questions or whatever you can do.
And again, Instagram really favors accounts that do this.
So make sure you take the time and energy to do it.
You won't see that quick boost when you do it,
but in the long run, it has a huge impact.
Some other hacks that you can follow.
If you look at my Instagram profile image,
I put a border around my image
and it causes more people to click on it.
And that's worked really well.
You can do captioned breakdowns on videos
because not everyone has their audio turned on.
You can use emojis to make your posts more interactive
and you can use the habit check generator, all-hashtags.com.
The second hack I have for you is working with influencers.
So why should you work with influencers?
Well, over 6 million brands are using
sponsored influencer posts on Instagram.
You can target your preferred audience
with higher precision.
You don't want to go after big influencers.
You want to go after influencers
that are focused around your niche
and influencers can show products in their posts,
their stories.
When they do in the stories,
you can have them swipe up to go to your website
and buy from there.
And all of this brings you closer to the customer
and your brand closer to customer.
And it'll generate more sales in the long run.
Here's some quick stats that I want to share with you,
which channels do predominantly tap into
for influencer marketing campaigns?
The number one is Instagram by far,
more than Facebook, more than YouTube,
even though Facebook and YouTube are bigger,
still it's super effective investor channel
you want to go after, when it comes
to influencer marketing.
Some general stats for you.
Average engagement rate on Instagram and Twitter in 2018.
I know we're past 2018,
but you know, it was analyzed
over 100,000 influencer profiles.
And what do they see?
Way better engagement on Instagram than Twitter.
And that's why most companies prefer Instagram
because engagement, not just compared to Twitter,
but pretty much all places has been way better.
And we got this data from status.com.
Some factors to consider you want to check engagement
of an influencer.
Just because someone has a lot of followers
doesn't mean that they're great.
You want to check the quality of the followers.
Are they commenting?
Are they engaging?
Are they liking?
Are there, you know, continually going
through many of their posts?
Is it just the last few posts that are doing well
or have they been consistently doing better over time?
Has their follower account being growing over time?
How often did they publish content?
What's their reach rate?
You also have to look at, you know, budget as well,
because if they're charging too much,
it probably isn't worth it.
And that's why I always recommend doing micro-influencers.
And a lot of people also do giveaways,
which has helped them boost their engagement as well.
Instagram allows you to do giveaways
that you can offer something for free in exchange
for a like, or a comment or any predetermined requirement.
And it's helped a lot of people grow their profiles.
So when you run giveaways,
you want to define the entry methods like likes tags,
photo captions, following you.
You want to create a theme and what I mean
by creating a theme like it needs to be related
to what you're doing.
You want to use hashtags, choose prizes.
The prizes need to be related to what you do as well.
Like if I did want,
I may do some prizes related to marketing.
I wouldn't just give away an iPad.
And you want to encourage people
to spread the word and exchange for the bonus.
Hack number three,
I want to go over content strategies
with the most engagement.
So what's working right now?
Well, I like reusing and reposting my top content.
So I'll go to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn,
and other places.
And if I'm looking at Instagram,
I'll look at what's working for other people.
If I'm going on the other networks,
I'll look at what's working for me
as well as what's working for other people
and go from there and post more of
that kind of content.
Also do a lot of user generated content that works well.
Collaborations with other influencers
is extremely effective.
You want to post consistently,
as I mentioned in the last lesson,
at least once every two days,
if not ideally, multiple times a day.
So what's new?
Well, Instagram Stickers.
You want to check those out.
Instagram challenges, memes, augmented reality.
These are all things that you could be leveraging
that a lot of people aren't.
If you're not sure what some of these things are.
Here's the example of stickers.
Here's the example of a 30 day photo challenge.
This is pretty cool.
And just sharing this and showing people this,
it makes them fall along.
Memes, you know, those are,
you've seen them all around,
you know augmented reality, you've seen that as well.
You've probably played the Pokemon go games as well.
Hack number four, Instagram Ads.
Ads are very effective.
A lot of people just don't want to end-up
running them or they think they're too expensive,
but you can get started with like 10, $20
and get pretty far even 50 bucks.
So you want to create a business page and a profile.
You must have a Facebook page to run ads
and create a free business profile.
On Instagram it's not hard.
Set up an ad, select the objective,
targeted audience and ad format within the ads manager.
As I mentioned, you can start with a low budget,
publish it and you're off to the races.
I know I didn't give you a lot of details on running ads,
but that's because I got this amazing resource for you
and it breaks on how to do it,
how to optimize, how to create them.
And you can get this resource at neilpatel.com/training,
click on "Instagram Unlocked,"
go to week two video or lesson two.
And once you do that, you'll see
the Instagram ads resources right underneath that.
Another thing that you want to do is try
to get on the Instagram explore page.
When you do this is a great place
to get more and more people,
this is where users engage with your posts,
your content, find you.
And when you work with these hacks
it's going to give you a much better chance
of getting found there.
Now the next hack is turning followers into customers.
Look, followers is great, but customers are even better.
If you're not getting sales,
who really cares at the end day.
And if you're in B2B leads are fine as well.
So making sales with Instagram.
If you post the right content,
you know, followers will soak up the marketing messages
and think about it.
Hence you want to create the demand for your product.
And a lot of these shoppers turn to social media
for references, especially when they look
at influencers and it helps convert
these passive shoppers into confident customers.
I like creating a store.
You can turn your Instagram profile into a store,
brand your Instagram with,
you know, your fitting profile,
your Avatar posts and everything for recognition.
So you just want it to all blend in with one theme
and one color scheme and that'll help people know
it's you, it's your product and that works very well
in the long run.
When you're promoting your products.
I want you to tag your products in your posts,
provide contact information and promote your post as well.
Cause if you do this, you'll start getting more
and more sales over time.
It's simple, but it really does work.
Now, if you want to drive on-site sales
look include the link in your bio.
When you do this, people will click on it.
You'll get some sales from that.
You want to stay recognizable with consistent,
you know, having that name,
that photo of their product.
You also want to post about your products,
every once in a while, that helps.
You can see this logo emblem from Versace, their symbol.
That's worked really well for them.
Look how many followers they have.
And if you create popular Instagram posts
that make people want to follow you,
you'll generate more sales in the long run.
Also will post stories and that people swipe up
that works really well because you can drive
it to your website and get sales from that too.
So when it comes to making offers,
you could consider offering promotions
or exclusive offers just for your Instagram followers.
And of course, boost the post to get more engagements,
strengthen your customer relationships.
Respond to every single comment as well.
You can also sell on your feed
and you can do this by responding
to notifications and shout outs from your followers.
Again you want to post consistently.
I know I keep bringing this up,
but it's one of the biggest things that people don't do.
I don't get why because it's one of the easiest things to do.
And you want to build a shoppable Instagram feed.
So for action items for you go to neilpatel.com/training,
click on "Instagram unlocked" go to week two, lesson two,
and you can download the Instagram engagement ad.
Guys sorry about that and the Instagram ad resources.
So both of those guides will help you out.
And the one on the ad resources,
we'll break down how to set up and optimize your ads
step-by-step.
It's super effective.
And I can't wait for the next lesson
because we're going to teach how to get the results faster
and help you get to the a hundred thousand follower account.
Just make sure you use these hacks cause they do work.
If you use them, you'll see results.
If you don't you, of course won't.
If you enjoy this video, like it, share it,
tell your friends about it.
And of course, subscribe to my channel.
If you need help with your social media marketing,
you can also check out my ad agency, Neil Patel Digital.
Thank you.